


cracked like a glass floor

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Character Studies (Dragon Age) [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon Age Quest: A Paragon of Her Kind, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarves, F/F, F/M, Orzammar, Paragon Branka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 02:49:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12003408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: The smokeless coal works.It works.It works.She breathes the clean air deep into her lungs, and the only sear is from the heat.  She trembles, hands shaking in her leather gloves.  “I’ve done it,” she whispers, but instead of satisfied she feels almost hollow.Hungry.There has to be more.





	cracked like a glass floor

Branka is two years old when her mother first passes her a hammer and a bit of tin and a toy anvil.  She hits her fingers with her first swing of the hammer and bites her lip.  She doesn’t want to cry; she wants to figure this out, the magic in the metal.

Hammer, tin, anvil.  Little taps.  The flat tin stretches, curves, molds itself in her small hands until she holds a little badge.  It looks like a nug’s ear if she squints.  She squeezes it within her palm, ignoring the sharp edges scratching her skin, and demands another piece of metal from her mother.

***

She’s eight years old and the flame of the forge fascinates, catches in her eyes like liquid gold.  She’s burned herself more than once, scars on her wrists and fingertips, but she doesn’t care.  The other smith children in her group still hang back from the fire, nervous of the heat, but Branka keeps so close to it her cheeks glow ruddy and the sweat paints her brow.  The flames reward her with clever bits of work the grownups’ fingers are too fat to craft.

***

Branka is twelve when her father brings her to the healer for the rattling cough.  “Smith’s lung,” the healer confirms, though she says she’s never seen it in a dwarf this young.  Branka’s impatient to get back to the forge.

Her parents manage to keep her away for a full two weeks – half of what the healer had insisted on – and when she returns, thick cloth bunched over her mouth and nose, her head spins with ideas.  Does the coal  _always_  have to smoke so?  She ignores the burn in her chest and sorts through the coal in the smithy.  Black smudges mar pages of frenzied notes, and the cough’s urge is ever present in the back of her throat, but she knows it’s just a puzzle.  Puzzles were only ever made to be solved.

***

She is seventeen and the finest smith in her house, has been for two years.  She hears talk of marriage in the night in her small home, while she lies in bed surrounded by books of theory and metallurgy.   _The warrior caste_? her mother murmurs.   _It could be very promising.  I’ve been talking with the Kondrats –_

Branka scowls.  The Kondrats have no daughters.  She tries to focus on the pages, screeds on the differences between graphite and coal, but instead she thinks of the girl from House Dartan, and the way her fingers move so finely in the forge, and might they move finely in other places, too –

Branka shoves her books to the floor irritably.  She doesn’t care much for the interruption, but she knows she will not be able to concentrate on her studies if she doesn’t indulge the thought of the girl with the dark eyes and the full lips.   _It will only take a moment,_  she thinks with a sigh, and slips her hand between her legs.

***

Oghren reminds her of fluorspar, she thinks, different facets and all of them fragile.  He’s brash and brave, strutting with his axe on his shoulders when he shakes her parents’ hands.  He’s bawdy in the pub, drinking just a little too much, a little too often, but not enough to be an embarrassment.  And with her, he’s gruff and strangely quiet, almost bashful at times.  “You’re beautiful, Branka, and damn brilliant,” he says.  “Sorry you’re stuck with a nugthumping hothead like me.  Could be worse, I guess, but you deserve better.”

She’s sorry too, for a lot of reasons, but she thinks maybe, maybe she is a little fond of him.  It’s not his fault she has other things to think about.  And besides, another girl-child with her smithing skills… Orzammar would only benefit.  So she fucks him, and if she thinks of dark-eyed Hespith with clever fingers instead, she doesn’t see the harm.

***

The smokeless coal works.

It works.

It works.

She breathes the clean air deep into her lungs, and the only sear is from the heat.  She trembles, hands shaking in her leather gloves.  “I’ve done it,” she whispers, but instead of satisfied she feels almost hollow.  

Hungry.

_There has to be more._

***

The feast is luxurious and overwrought and there are far too many people and Oghren is getting drunk in the corner.  She wonders, sometimes, about the way he looks at her at late.  Almost as if he worries about her.  He quaffs another ale, but keeps his eyes on the floor.

“Paragon Branka!” the nobles cry, and her skin crawls.  

King Endrin’s hands are wizened, paper-like on her own.  He’s one to have never held a hammer.  She fights a twist of her lip.  “Paragon Caridin would be proud,” he says, and she nods politely.

_He’d be proud?  I could do him one better._

The thought sustains her, even more than the wink and the lush smile she catches Hespith wearing.  That night Oghren passes out for the first time, but Branka’s not there to see him sleeping on the bedroom floor.  Hespith’s bed is soft and warm like Hespith herself, and Branka fucks her until she screams.  

Hespith falls asleep first, and Branka strokes her hair with one hand, thinking,  _So I **can**  have whatever I want.  _

The thought makes her smile.

***

The city still hums with the song of her smokeless coal, but she knows better.  It’s only the beginning.

The Anvil calls to her.

She enters the Deep Roads at night, the people of her House behind her, Oghren left behind still sleeping.  She does not bother with a note.  He never gave her a child; she’ll pass on her wisdom, her knowledge, her vision in other ways.  She does not owe him anything, a little fond or not.

Hespith at her side is loyal, trusting, dark eyes beautiful in the torchlight.  She smiles, but Branka does not return the expression.  She has begun to guess what happened to Caridin, forbidden knowledge gleaned from lost texts and dark inferences.  She knows she well may ask everything of those who follow her, even if they have not yet realized what that means.

_A puzzle to solve_ , she thinks, and she marches forward into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> The Warden says that Branka surely wasn't mad before she left for the Anvil of the Void. Oghren disagrees. "She was cracked like a glass floor." It's a poetic, and terrible, thing to say; a brilliant observation about a flawed and brilliant woman.


End file.
